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Optimal syrup production starts at the tree, and requires thinking beyond the current season. This session focuses on tapping practices that both maximize yield and ensure long-term sustainability of your sugarbush. Topics include timing of tapping, taphole placement, taphole sanitation, and sap collection.
The Cornell Maple Program presents Sweet Talk, with hosts, co-directors of CMP, Aaron Wightman and Adam Wild. Your hosts will present the latest research, news, and trends in the maple industry, with various guests including other maple researchers, industry experts, and local sugarmakers.
The Cornell Maple Program in Lake Placid, NY has been managing groves of sugar maples selected and propagated for having genetically sweeter sap for close to 40 years. Are these trees actually sweeter and how much sap do they produce? Recent sampling looked back over the plantation to test the heritability of sap sweetness.
In recent years, research at Cornell University’s Uihlein Maple Research Forest has looked at ways to maximize maple sap production through tapping practices such as spout selection, re-tapping and timing of tapping.
Adam Wild, the director of Cornell University’s Uihlein Maple Research Forest located in Lake Placid, NY, shares information about basic tubing design and installation for both gravity and vacuum systems.
Work done at the Uihlein Maple Research Forest in Lake Placid during the 2018 and 2019 maple syrup season looked at timing of tapping to best capture the most amount of sap. During this study it was found that trees tapped in late March did not yield as much syrup since they missed early sap runs. Trees tapped in January were able to capture early season sap runs but yield diminished slightly near the end of the season due to microbial plugging.